The scam began with an email to N.Y. lawyer Peter Ronai’s website, claiming a Hungarian woman was perhaps one of the missing people from the Jan. 13 accident.

A luxury boat passes the Costa Concordia cruise ship which ran aground off the west coast of Italy as it arrives at the harbour at Giglio Island Wednesday. The captain of the doomed Italian liner Costa Concordia said he was told by managers to take his ship close in to shore on the night it ran aground and capsized, according to bugged conversations leaked in Italian newspapers.

By:Debra BlackStaff Reporter, Published on Wed Jan 25 2012

A New York-based lawyer representing six survivors of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster says he has cracked a possible fraud involving a trio of Hungarians who were attempting to scam money from the ill-fated cruise line.

The scam began with an email to Peter Ronai’s website, claiming a Hungarian woman was perhaps one of the missing people from the accident.

Ronai, a personal injury lawyer, was already in Budapest, helping six Hungarian survivors of the Jan. 13 tragedy, when he got the email, he told the Star in a phone interview from Hungary.

Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized off the Italian island of Giglio after Captain Francesco Schettino allegedly veered off course and crashed the ship’s hull on a reef, forcing the evacuation of 4,200 passengers and crew.

Rescuers have recovered 16 bodies; 17 people are still missing.

Ronai went immediately to check out the story. But something about it didn’t ring true and the story didn’t hold up. At first a woman identifying herself as Ilona said her daughter Eva was missing.

Then Ilona added her 5-year-old granddaughter Roxana was missing, Ronai said. Then Eva’s supposed boyfriend and father of Roxana contacted Ronai saying his daughter was not missing and it had been a misunderstanding. He told Ronai he had been confused because he’d done too many drugs the night before.

Ronai then asked to see the granddaughter. The next day accompanied by police officers he went to the boyfriend’s apartment. The granddaughter, when questioned, told Ronai and the police that her mother was alive and well and she had just seen her when they’d gone to the park earlier in the day, Ronai said.

Eventually, Eva — the supposed mother and reportedly missing woman — also appeared. But she insisted she had been on the Concordia, owned and operated by Costa Cruises, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruises, when it went down, saying she had injured her leg, Ronai said.

After extensive questioning the woman and her boyfriend finally admitted it was all a scam, suggesting they hadn’t really done anything wrong since they hadn’t taken any money.

When asked why they did it. Neither expressed any remorse, Ronai said. “He wasn’t sorry or remorseful, just sorry they blew it. He felt if they hadn’t mentioned the 5-year-old granddaughter they would have got away with it.”

This kind of thing happens all the time in New York, explained Ronai.

“In New York we call them jumpers. For example in New York City if there’s a bus accident they don’t have a manifest of who was on the bus. People just claim they were on the bus and injured for money.”

“The problem was these guys were stupid enough to do it on a case this big.”

Hungary, a former communist country, has no insurance fraud laws to deal with the case, according to Ronai. “Hungary has never had anything like this happen…They don’t know how to punish these people.”

In an interview on Hungarian television he suggested they pass a new law and call it the Concordia law which would delineate that if you try to pull a scam in a lawsuit, you’re going to go to jail.

A statement on the Hungarian Foreign Ministry’s website posted Monday confirms the attempted fraud took place.

A Hungarian woman who had allegedly been on the Costa Concordia was reported missing, the statement read. But those reports were “unfounded.” The statement said Hungary would be investigating and would take appropriate action if needed.